I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Recycling day: Peace dec

My very occasional "recycling day" posts usually point back to past things that I've written that still have relevance in the present. This time, I want to point back (with permission) to a past post written by someone else, in this case CSM8 and 9 member Mike Azariah. At Fanfest this year, he told me a funny and intriguing story about this post, which described something he called a "peace dec".

Now the purpose to Mike's original post and this somewhat longer post describing and expanding on his idea is not not not to make a proposal regarding EVE Online. It is simply to attempt to get you to look at the game in a new way. That was Mike's idea, and it was a really good one. I'd just like to give this idea wider exposure.

EVE players that describe the game as a "PvP sandbox" are flat wrong, and are wrong in a specific way that betrays a basic lack of understanding of the sandbox mechanic. But this phrase and the belief that goes with it are relatively widespread among the player base. And it's usually the most widespread among players that want to enforce their ideas of "how people should play EVE" on others. So the peace dec turns the perceptions of these players on their head to comic effect. Here's how it works.

In the existing war dec mechanic, one corp may declare war on another. In the vast majority of cases, the war dec mechanic is used so that a PvP-based corp may freely attack the ships of a PvE, manufacturing, mining, or industry corp in high-sec. The peace dec mechanic works the same way, except in reverse: a PvE, manufacturing, mining, or industry corp "declares peace" on a PvP corp or alliance. While the peace dec is in place, the alliance or corp under its influence may not preemptively attack another ship. Those under a peace dec may defend themselves against attackers, but that is all.

Not only are they perpetually under a "green safety", but in high-sec their aggressive mods simply would not operate at all unless they were shooting at a ship that had already attacked them, their corp, or their alliance. Mike refers to this state as an "ultra-green" safety. This restriction would follow peace dec'ed ships into low-sec. Only in null would the peace dec be without effect, just as war decs are also more or less meaningless in null.

Just as a war dec can only be lifted by the surrender or agreement of the corp or alliance on which it is used, a peace dec could only be lifted in the same way. As long as the "peace dec'ing" corp wanted the restriction to remain in place and was willing to pay for it to do so, it would remain in place. Instead of tracking comparative kills between the parties affected, the tool would track missions completed, rats killed, industry jobs completed, and minerals mined. Perhaps if this were a serious proposal -- which I am again quick to say it is not -- if the peace-dec'ed corp or alliance exceeded the PvE totals of the corp or alliance placing the peace dec on them could they again preemptively attack other players.

So that's the gist of the peace dec idea: while under a peace dec, your corp or alliance may not be aggressive toward other EVE players. You may only shoot at players who shoot at you first.

In short, the peace dec forcibly limits how you are "allowed" to play EVE Online to a specific way... a specific way that you yourself might reject, find un-fun or uninteresting, and that might cause you to leave your corp or alliance to escape the effects of, or cause you to log out of the game for days or weeks at a time hoping for it to be over when you return. And the peace dec may be kept on your corp or alliance in perpetuity if the evil bastards that place it on you have enough money or want to grief you hard enough to do it.

We're pretty far down the rabbit hole at this point... but this is how a war dec feels to some EVE Online players. They're not allowed to play a game they find fun with their friends... and they can be prevented from doing so in perpetuity by other EVE players.

Kind of an interesting way to look at war decs, isn't it? Thanks to Mike Azariah for sharing this idea with me!

EVE does not appear sandbox game to me simply because it is just as sandbox-like as some of the themepark games I have played before coming to EVE. Now, the place where it does give sandboxy feeling is forums, where GIRLs (guys-in-real-life) complain about the sand in their box (how this or that player plays the game wrong). This may change in the future if the Seagull's vision does come true.

Now, about the Peace Declaration. Yeah... Mike is certainly right and I agree with your post. This got me to think about the in game justification of War Declaration. It is supposedly a bribe to keep authorities looking the other way while capsuleers kill each other. But logically capsuleers (single players, corps, alliances) could bribe authorities to keep them safe regardless of other bribes. They might even pay for faster CONCORD response - sort of platinum card for security in high security space. It might be costly, but the tears of gankers would be priceless.

Poe's yet to be right about much of anything except removing himself from Eve, and he couldn't even do that properly. To think this post is some sort of secret sneaky plan by Jester to bring this into the game and destroy all PVP, no doubt while cackling madly all the while, is pants-on-head retarded.

It’s OK to support carebears. One just has to put some careful thought into how it’s accomplished in a sandbox game. Consider . . .

It might be helpful to clarify a primary theme of Hi-Sec play. Mostly, it’s about living a civilized space life chockfull of law and order. This doesn’t mean there is no crime, rather, it means there’s robust institutions keeping civilizing law and order in place (Concord, Secure Commerce Commission, etc . . .). For criminals this means navigating the law and order institutions. For the law abiding it means relying on the very same law and order institutions for the bulk of their protection.

Two criminal examples:1) Theft gets you “suspect” status which in practice means Concord declares it won’t protect you for a period of time *and* tells everyone else you’re not being protected. From Concord’s point of view this appears to be a petty crime. Bad enough to get you on a “we don’t care about you” list but not terrible enough to generate direct Concord action.

2) Bribe the space police. No one said Concord was an upstanding institution. With enough ISK the belligerent capsuleer can convince the space police to look the other way when fighting player controlled corporations. We call this “war-deccing.”

One law abiding citizen example:Pay your taxes! If you expect an NPC institution to shoulder the bulk of your protection you probably ought to expect to have to pay that institution to do it. This automatically happens at an 11% rate when you are in an NPC corp but that 11% disappears when you join a player corp. Pay the NPC tax, get their robust protection. Don’t pay the NPC tax, don’t get their robust protection.

Well that opens up an interesting idea . . .Perhaps adding a corp option to continue paying taxes for NPC protection could make you more expensive to war dec. The higher your corp’s NPC tax rate, the more expensive you are to war-dec. We might call this “Tanking” your corp.

The tax idea isn't bad, though CCP clearly stated they prefer people to leverage their ISK by hiring player-run merc corps.

Another good idea would be to include an advanced tutorial that requierd players to accomplish PVE objectives (missions, hauling, etc.) while permanently suspect. It would convince people that wardecs aren't the end of the PVE world.

I was thinking of a type of newbie corp, ....call them NPC associated companies. These player corps are more expensive to war dec but on the other hand less rewarding. Maybe have no rights to anchor a pos, can only use a small selection of high sec agents, must pay NPC taxes, cant fly incursions .... but nonetheless offer all the social content a starting player wants.

Your idea of a tax-tanked (high-sec)corp works different, but is also founded on the risk vs reward concept

The basic issue hiring player-run merc corps is that it's not effective in game. The wardecer either enjoys fighting them, docks up or otherwise evades the war decers. Either way it's not effective at getting the war decer to end the war. The effective way is to be boring or frustrating.

Holyeee Crap Ripard... why NOT make it a possibility? Whats good for the goose n all, right? Take a stand, make it a thing, and if nothing else it will get people TALKING... well, raging and screaming etc. ... but that's pretty normal for EVE players, now aint it?

rofl, no. Imagine the Marmite wardec and peacedec your corp at the same time or, if that's not mechanically possible, they use an alt corp for the later.

As a theoretical exercise, it is good and I could only hope any dev redesigning the war decs would keep that kind of inverse reasoning in mind to judge whatever changes they consider implementing. On a more realistic analysis though, they usually put the Moronic Double in charge of that kind of redesign and it is unlikely they would ever come around to wardecs again before the game tanks, whenever that happens.

This is very similar to the conversation I've been participating on Eve University forums http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=80538

I brainstormed some ideas that stem from the "forcing things traditionally though as PVE on others players" idea. All of them are as bad as peace dec, but you can read them here http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=80538&start=30#p701072

TurAmarath, really? The reason it is not a serious is while it illustrates the point brilliantly it has way worse issues that war decs. The fact that you would jump on it as a serious change you want is this game to me illustrates your disconnection with the reality of the EVE. Making the game bad for everybody because it's bad for you surely solves no retention problems.

Jezuz Megaron... you really need a remedial Reading for comprehension course bro... You've read my blog, I cannot begin to number the times and ways in which I have sated, for the record, that I DO NOT want the PvP mechanics of EVE changed...

Same as Jester I was MAKING A POINT. I said it might get people talking about the very one sided (IE agression) PvP mindset so many EVE players have. That PVP is right, but any protection against PvP is somehow wrong... Read anything by Rixx Javix (who really I like) about Warp Core Stabs... it's just frakkin hilarious how he goes on about 1 particular defensive ewar module, but has no issue at all with using points and webs, both of which are offensive ewar mods (I'd give anything for CCP to come out with an ECM mod to counter webs too... Rixx would go ballistic!).

However, what I really DO want is our new players TAUGHT about PvP in EVE... about how in a game with truly open PvP you can find even more fulfillment and enjoyment because what you do actually matters... because you CAN lose your STUFF that stuff can have a higher value as does accomplishment.

Now if EVE is "real", then in the real world, any nation can force war upon any other nation. If the USA decides to go to war with Papua New Guinea, but PNG says "No, we want peace." There's dick-all PNG can do to force peace, other than to give in to whatever demands the USA wants. Peace cannot be forced upon any group that doesn't desire it.

A Peace Dec is a mechanic that doesn't reflect human behaviour, aggression, greed, and desire.

Your analogy applies to Null sec. In high sec however there are external police so it reflects a different sort of situation.

It would be more like a real situation with corrupt police, since thats pretty much exactly what concord are. Criminals pay them to look the other way while they go about hurting/killing people. Or you could pay them more money to start surveilling your enemies and arresting them as soon as they try to do something illegal.

Well, eve corps aren't nations, they are groups of peole within a spcoety. If wardec is a bribe for police to look the other way, then peace-dec is a bribe for police to track the target and interpret all laws in a maximally restricting ways. Restraining orders exist in real life.

And righ now high-sec wardeccers are griefers that pick a helpless target and torment it. If eve is hard for their victims, why it shouldn't be hard for them too?

In the real world, asymmetric warfare makes warmongering a dangeorus endeavour. Maybe PNG can't do shit about being wardecced by the US, but the US may be forced to defend itself from crazy PNGs (or their sympathizers) attacking people in major US cities.

Of course, EVE does not have the equivalent to that, so a player's only chance to push back a wardeccer would be to do so in real life... and then it all becomes very uncomfortable.

1) So, something about the Pax Romana? Let's see, during that 200 year period, 27BC to 180AD: Augustus finished conquering Spain, conquered Germany up to the Rhine, and expanded Roman holdings in modern Turkey; Claudius finished conquering Britain and expanded Eastwards; Nero fought the Parthians and put down Boudica's revolt; Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian fought a 4-way Civil War over succession that ended up on the streets of Rome; Trajan attacked the Dacians twice, taking their capital the second time and invaded Parthia; Hadrian put down a Jewish revolt; and finally, Marcus Aurelius campaigned in Northern Germany.A very Roman Peace indeed.

2) Mutually Assured Destruction is a situation where two countries have each decided that peace is preferable to warfare. Each side is still quite *able* to wage war on the other, they just expect there to be consequences and are unwilling due to those consequences. In other words, war isn't initiated because neither side expects to win.

Now, I'm not saying you're wrong (mainly because you neglected to provide an actual argument in your post), but I'm having a hard time figuring out an argument for which those examples provide good evidence.

I don't think there is any dispute that the war dec mechanic is abused by the more predatory element o Eve's population; just look at how E-Uni is constantly wardecced. These types of players aren't looking for good fights or any sort of meta game, they are preying on those that either can't or don't want to fight back. War decs need to be balanced somehow to give more even risk/reward. As it is, a war deccing griefer has nearly zero risk when attacking a hisec "carebear" corp.

If the hisec carebears learn simple evasion tactics, any silly 'noob griefer' will get exactly zero kills for their nearly zero risk. I'm not referring to staying docked or dropping corp, I'm talking in-space evasion which anybody that can do PVE missions can very easily learn.

PVP corps that really know their stuff would be more difficult to avoid, but they usually don't waste their time (and their reputation) in wardeccing noobs.

Also, E-Uni aren't exactly noobs so, unsurprisingly, they have no issues at all in dealing with wardecs.

For newer players with only one character, it gives them an incentive to not join a player corporation. There are few ways for a new player to actually "avoid" wartargets that are experienced. They will use ooc scouts, and quickly hit system, warp to their alt, and land on the carebear before the carebear can do much. Even a few second lag noticing local will mean their death. There is no threat to the aggressor in this type of war.

This is not great for EVE, as joining a player corporation and forming social bonds tends to increase fun in the game and player retention.

Actually it gives new players an incentive to join PVE corporations that know how to evade. And PVE corporations an incentive to learn it and pass the knowledge to their newbros, making a better game for all.

Just an example: if you're running a mission, you're in a deadspace pocket. There is no way for anybody to warp at zero on you. Also, you'll notice combat probes on your dscan while the baddies are trying to scan your location.

You can do what the incursion communities do there: have a chat channel. After all, that's all the corporation is doing anyway.

In fact, it has been noted in the past that corporation mechanics actively discourage forming corporations for groups like incursioners and serious missioners: you can't be awoxed by a guy in a 1-man tax-evasion corp.

What is the use of an incentive to join a PVE corp that knows how to evade when it's not obvious how to join a corp, who to join, and which of the people recruiting you are not just going to talk you into putting everything you own into a hauler and going somewhere to get blown up? That's ridiculous. It's hard enough to find a corp to join, period.

As for Anon @ 12:25, you know why they're called tax evasion corps, right? Because someone had the brilliant idea to tax them out of the NPC corps--and therefore, out of NPC corp chat, where they might have helped someone out--so that they could be wardecced. Now you want to punish them again, why? If they wanted to do what you want them to do, they would have done it by now. They will find a way to play the way they want to play, or they will leave.

Yes, finding a good corp isn't easy. But that has nothing to do with the fact that PVE corps that are good enough to just laugh at wardecs exist and, under the current wardec system, are rewarded for their smarts with a competitive advantage vs. the incompetent corps.

As for incursioners, higher tax isn't punishment, it's an incentive to take pvp-capable ships to incursions. You can't be hotdropped in highsec anyway, it already is easy-peasy.

Stupid but no less necessary to spice up high-sec according to the HTFU mythology, no matter how much I dislike wardeccing. Jester is pointing out a fundamental disconnect between the concept of the sandbox and its EVE implementation that forces some players to dance to others' tunes.

It's a trap. Because this is the Internet, most conflict is about dominance, and allowing griefers to hide behind the term "sandbox" lets them avoid facing up to the contradiction.

As painful as it might be, Jester is actually suggesting that we *think* about nonconsensual play before defending it all under one aegis, and certainly before leaping to knee-jerk fallacies of the extreme.

Anonymous @ 3:56 gets it. This is nonconsensual PVP, forcing your play style on an unwilling player. And should you merely mention it, all the people who just assume that it will always be them or someone like them forcing their play style on some other schmuck suddenly forget all their impassioned arguments about "non-consensual PVP" and "you don't have a right to play the way you want to" and suddenly start waving a sort of PVP Player's Bill of Rights around. Suddenly, if they can't play the way they want to at all times, OMG theme park!

Hence, why Malcanis is unable to get it:"What! a new nonconsensual way of imposing your will on others, this shit should totally BE in the game, not just theory talk, it should be in... hold on a minute, I hate the living crap out of this shit."

A simple & elegant solution to wardec griefing: only corporations who have declared wars in the past can be wardecced in the future. This safeguard only would work for individual corporations, so a corporation joining an alliance would lose it.

As Az says, war dec's are a required game mechanic, at least in high sec. However, the game mechanic in some way has to be altered to eliminate the war dec as a tool of griefers just trying to find groups to harass.How that can be done, I am not sure entirely.

Wars in high sec should be fought for economic reasons, perhaps even ideological ones, but certainly not for just "good fights." That is the lore behind low sec Factional Warfare, and its has worked out pretty well, and resulted in lots of incidental fighting anyway.

So high sec, especially with the on-going economic devastation it is experiencing thanks to the null sec economic warfare groups via the CSM , does not need griefers running around ruining the game play of random groups "just because they can".

Yes, wardecs must exist, but throw away any illusion they can be "fixed".

At the beginning, they were broken, then slowly over the years they have been tweaked and remained broken anyway. Then, once, CCP put a lot of effort, remade the mechanics from scratch and the result was it remained broken, in a slightly different way, but broken nonetheless.

It cannot be fixed because it is the exception of the rule, the rule being Concord tries to intervene in highsec aggression. It is one big "it's either X or Y" type of rule. If you leave it as that, then a lot of edge cases aren't covered, thus the experienced has advantages. If you add a series of smaller "X or Y" rules to cover these edge cases, then the experienced again has advantages compared to the unexperienced, since they will know how to better exploit the list of rules currently in effect. The more rules you add, the worst it gets.

Especially since POS are going to no longer require standing just tie taxes to a corp owning one (if you don't have an active POS you pay taxes) and make the war dec mechanic tied to the POS. I'd go as far as making a specific POS the war target (and loser pays the winner a substantial sum in reparations if theirs is destroyed). This would also give mercinaries a real purpose (to do something besides camp hubs) and would provide very good reasons for hiring them.

So nullsec alliances could trivially be immune to wardecs? Haha OK, I can just see that being super popular.

Seriously though, that would mean that the only people who can be wardecced would be the people you'd hire to prosecute a wardec. non-consensual PvP in high sec would immediately be reduced to suicide ganking because that would be the only viable option.

Why not cut to the chase and go with my suggestion on EVE-O:

1) People I like may dec anyone they want2) People I don't like can't dec anyone3) Make sure you're not on the bad list.

Big groups splitting their activities in "clean" and "dirty" corps wouldn't help them as their "dirty" corps couldn't wardec "clean" ones and their "clean" ones currently are more easily gankable than wardeccable. Also a "clean" corp can gank for free, exactly as they do today as wardeccing a ganker corp only makes life easier to them.

As for non-consensual PvP being reduced to ganking... HTFU and go fight PvPr's for a change.

By the way, you summarized quite well the current situation, but you got point 2) wrong:

1) People I like may dec anyone they want2) People I don't like can't avoid decs in no way3) Make sure you're not on the bad list.

Let's take Ripard Teg at his word, shall we? This post isn't advocating a "peace dec" mechanic in Eve Online, as most of the commentators supra seem to be responding to. In fact, the post and the original idea by Mike Azariah state unequivocally that it is not a serious proposition.

It is, rather, an argument against the (widespread) assertion that the wardec mechanic can be justified merely by "because Eve is a sandbox," along with an appeal to consider the other side: people subject to a wardec. Here is the form of the post:

1. If wardecs exist "because EVE is a sandbox," peace decs should exist for the same reason.1.1 Wardecs dictate "how people should play EVE" on pve-ers1.2 Peace decs dictate "how people should play EVE" on pvpers2. Peace decs would make the game suck for pvpers. 3. Hopefully, pvpers can now empathize w/ pve-ers re wardecs.

You're right, many people arguing for and against wardecs bring very silly and shortsighted arguments to the discussion. 'HTFU!!!' on one side and '15$ a month entitles me to do as I please!!!' on the other are just two sad examples :).

Luckily, CCP seems to have a firm vision of the bigger picture, let's hope it stays that way!

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai - all PvP is consensual. You may not have WANTED it, but you consented when you undocked. The tutorial even tells you all activities in EVE have a risk of ship loss and death. If you're in space, you are a valid PvP target. Deal with it.

@Justin Thomas: EVE is about risk vs reward. Where is the risk in wardeccing non-PvPrs? Players wllling to PvP other players through wardecs should risk being opposed by players as willing to PvP as themselves.

You may think that players who don't want to PvP don't belong in EVE. CCP thinks so too, apparently. And now that people is leaving your precious server empty.

You can push themYou can bruise themYes, even shoot themBut, oooh: that empty server!

A fun idea! But the real flaw is thinking that wardecs force PVE corps to PVP. That's only partially true.

PVP is two-fold: killing and evading. Wardecs do not force you to kill anybody, they only force you to evade your enemies when you undock ships.

Evading is MUCH easier than killing in EVE PVP. While it is true that a PVE corp has very little chance of getting kills, it has a VERY high chance of avoiding losses. And I don't mean staying docked, I mean learning the 'evading' part of PVP, which isn't hard at all.

I agree EVE isn't a combat PVP only game, but it IS a competitive game. A PVE corp that learns how to easily build, haul, explore, mission and even mine under a wardec gains an edge over other PVE corps, as it should be.

Keep in mind evading means not playing the part of the game one enjoys to only play the part of the game considered the burden that must be endured to get to the part that's enjoyable. The ability to do that only exists in one direction.

Nope, evading means playing the enjoyable part better. Random examples:- Missioning away from the accel-gate warpin and using dscan- Hauling with covops cloaks or mwd+cloaks- Safe travelling with dock/undock bookmarks

Wardecs make PVE activites more challenging --> more interesting. Else it would be like playing alone on the test server.

I am wondering if you got the "try to walk in their shoes" point of the peace-dec post. You come across as if you are arguing I should become (more of a) PvP player. Let me explain:

I am purely a PvE player. What little PvP I joined was only for two reasons: to avoid letting down my friends in need and in order to learn some basics.

Anyhow, I actually know how to do all that you list, but where you got the (to me) crazy idea that playing that way would be more enjoyable to me, I cannot fathom at all. I cannot even agree to call it more interesting. There is nothing interesting to me in adding that kind of challenge.

Actually, if I would consider that kind of gameplay interesting, I think I would do PvP already.

EVE is great if you enjoy:- Combat PVP- Competitive trading / industry in a pretty awe-inspring simulation- Space PVE (mining, missioning) with a little bit of PVP risk

That's quite a broad spectrum of things to enjoy and I surely forgot something too.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy peaceful shooting at rocks or red crosses and really hate the fact that someone can, occasionally, mess up your gameplay, then you surely can play EVE as much as you want BUT you will occasionally dislike it.

Alas, the game cannot be changed to accomodate your preferred playstyle without sugarcoating all the other playstyles I mentioned.

One tool I still miss in our sandbox is a way to consequently deny fights to 'pvp-ers'. Let them come, think they got a juicy (undefended) target, and then oh-noes, no fight. The tears from such an event would be priceless.

So how about promoting some ideas to make denying a fight just as possible as hotdropping?

The whole point is that, while EVE is perfectly playable without actively PVP-ing, everybody should learn how to EVADE players trying to kill you. Unless they never undock a ship (for example, traders or builders that outsource their hauling).

PVP 'evasion' - and yes, also 'blue-balling' :) - is quite easy to learn. Anybody that learned how to mission can do it.

I'm still of the opinion that the worst thing CCP has ever done was when they 'fixed' the new wardec glitch concerning free mutual wars. I completely disagree with the current system where large enough alliances are effectively immune to casual wardecs from smaller corps, and where there is a limit to how many people can wardec you back.

Case in point was the wardec that forced this change when Goonswarm got mutual wardec'd by half of empire. In my opinion this was the best anti-meta-meta ever. The goons spend soo much time setting up this nasty, anti-high sec storyline that creates a very polarized new Eden concerning the goons. And the. It backfires on then by having all of their enemies lock them into a perpetual forever war in empire. Make no mistake, this was NOT a broken game mechanic nor could it ever work on just any corp or alliance. The results of that war dec were directly created and fueled by the goons own propaganda and actions. And then CCP let them off the hook by changing the mechanic.

That was the most disgusting move CCP has made in the 6 years I've been playing. Showed that they really are controlled by goons. I always thought that was tinfoil hat territory but that wardec reversal changed my mind.

Only good part was that it did show how the goon/CFC leadership are a bunch of whiny cowards.

my favorite piece for that episode, was some worthy arguing that Jade was using the metagame to gain involvement. oh the irony. I doubt anybody of note has said the same of hulkgeddon or other "player driven content".

the "dogpile" explanation. So a 9000 player alliance wardecing a 100 player is normal, but open up to 5000 allies is now dogpiling.

these are the same people that keep up the noise for risk vs reward. I didn't think eve allowed take backs - I guess Goons got a "get of dec free" that day. maybe someone clever can to a motivational poster for that.

the goons took a huge that turned out to be a shit sandwich. they should been made to swallow.

On the contrary, this 'peace dec' idea is incomplete. A wardec only allows you to attack corps you've wardec'd. Allowing a 'peace' dec to, hypothetically, stop all PvP is disproportionate and unbalanced. Corps under a 'peacedec' shouldn't be able to attack the other corp in the peacedec, not everyone in general. Otherwise, under the terms of this hypothetical, you're proposing that any corporation with an active wardec on anyone should be allowed to attack anyone without consequence. Which, naturally, is the flip side of this coin. Of course, then there comes the hilarious moment when a corp wardecs someone that's peacedec'd them.

Further, what would be the consequences of failing to keep your stats up during a peacedec? In a wardec, losing means you're either camped in a station or getting blown up. In a peacedec, this would mean...hmm...penalties to mining output? Penalties to industry output? Perhaps a general ISK tax from one corporation to another, say, 50% of all the revenue of every member of the other corp?

If some people think one wardec on a single corp is a ticket to UNLIMITED PvP WITH ALL THE PEOPLES...well...that's their problem for not understanding the game. Suffice to say, I have zero empathy for the people you're claiming to represent, and in fact active contempt for their overt failure to understand basic game mechanics.

No, you've simply missed the point that the idea is intended to make. The peace-dec was never intended to be a perfect mirror on a mechanical level; it's a mirror at the meta-game level.

A war-dec forces a PvE corp to play by PvP rules: therefore, a peace-dec forces a PvP corp to play by PvE rules.

However, combining your question about consequences with the other point raised about evading PvP suggests an elegant addition to the proposal: the peace-dec's effects only apply if the 'attacker' is ahead on 'peace-score'.

Beat the PvEers at their own game, and you can go about your business normally; fail, and you have to stop PvPing.

Naturally, the funniest part of all of this would be when nullsec starts peace-deccing the much smaller highsec corps. It'd be, effectively, an instant 50% tax on all of highsec. Or crippled industry. Or, or, or. Plus, the larger corporations wouldn't be effected, since they'd be outpacing the smaller ones.

Actually, that kind of corporate takeover mechanic combined with wardecs sounds absolutely perfect. If you start losing ships in a war and dock up like a coward, your PvE stats fall and you start seeing penalties to your extant income due to your enemies outpacing you in PvE stats. A large enough disparity allows your attacker to outright take over your corp - hangar, wallet, etc. along with, say, a portion of individual assets to keep cowards from simply moving everything out of corp. Along with penalties for leaving a corporation on the wrong end of the PvE scale.

How about, when a corp war dec you, you can bribe back CONCORD to set the security status every member of the attacking corp to -5 during the duration of said war dec. This could be done for the same fee as paid to declare war, to be re-paid if the war dec is extended and stopped as soon as the war dec ends.

Any status gain or loss for people under this state would remain hidden until the end of the bribe. The only way to loose the -5 sec status would be to end the war dec.

With this change, anytime you war dec another corp you take the chance of having a permanent (for the duration of the war dec) outlaw status for all members of your corp, with all the consequences (faction polices, free target for everyone else, ...).

This would give industrialists and missionners a fair shot at fighting back wardeccers by hitting back at their playstyle, and make war decs at two sided coin instead of the low risk mechanism it is now.

I think it should be clear to everlyone that the "EVE is harsh" and "HTFU or GTFO" policies have resulted in far more GTFO than HTFU, and certainly not many new player subs in the past 3 years.

So, the real question is whether or not CCP should continue down a path which loses them money. Granted that CCP's management are not the sharpest business people on the planet, but the sky is clearly falling on their heads and they can't continue to deceive themselves even unto eventual bankruptcy, can they?

The implications are that if you want players to be immune to other players in space than you better be fucking willing to add an NPC element that does everything players can do including mining and manufacturing. Immunity shouldn't extend to combat only.

Wow, that was unexpected. From "EVE players that describe the game as a "PvP sandbox" are flat wrong" to complete player immunity seems quite a leap to me. As it is, it looks like you think sandboxes in general go out on a limb to provide extra protection to the players. Would you call, say, a minecraft server a PvP sandbox?

"EVE *is* a PvP game"How much of that is your perception and how much is what it actually is?

"The focus is PvP"In terms of development, it seems to be the case now. Didn't seem like that when I started. In terms of overall player behavior, well ... you can pretty much choose the answer you feel more comfortable with, selecting a subset of aspects of the game to back it up.

"and PvP is what keeps the game going and healthy"Cannot disagree, both in the "going" and in the "healthy".

EVE *is* a sandbox first... PvP is but one part of it not the be all and end all. And PvP abused, used to grief noobs and the desire of many l33t PvPers (you l33t aint you Justin) to force players to Rage Quit, cause it's 'Good For The Game'... is pure BS.

PvP is important. but it can be abused and it does not keep EVE 'going and healthy'... The rules we have for PvP do however keep EVE a niche game... a very very niche game but one I vastly prefer over 'safer' games...

We do need to talk about this and if, in that discussion.. (weeding out the worthwhile from the Dimsdales and Justins, IE the extremists) we find some potential Good Ideas for better balance in PvP... Well, that would make it all worth the time and effort.

I do wish I had a better idea... but other than far better tutorials that teach PvP and about griefers and such I don't... and with CCP's desire to move to a more context specific way to learn EVE, well... I have no idea ATM how a PvP tutorial would translate over.

Strange how so many of our toons don't PvP. Guess it's not a PvP game, after all.

To miners, it's a mining game. To industrialists, it's a manufacturing game. Traders think it's a trading game. Missioneers see it as a missioning game. Christian fundamentalists like to say that America is a Christian nation, too.

Experienced EVE players know that EVE is a whole lot of possible games to play that happen to share a shard.

A game mechanic that says "NO YOU CANNOT PVP" is a bit different from a game mechanic that goes "These guys can attack you now. You can PvE, but you'll have to be smart about it now."

Basically, imagine if Wardecs were changed to not allow any the target corp to receive NPC bounties, loot an NPC, use any sort of mining or salvage module, or use hacking/relic modules. Basically, "YOU CANNOT PVE BECAUSE GAME SAYS SO."

If you can't distinguish between limitations imposed on you by the game, and challenges presented by other players, then I pity you. EVE is a game about player interactions and you don't get to cherry-pick which interactions you have to deal with. Everyone has a level playing field.

Player interaction does not have to be PvP, there are other forms of interaction. Unfortunately in Eve it's either PvP, or scamming, those are the interactions that are emphasized by the player base. Both are done as groups upon others, and sometimes by individuals, but given the narrow confines of these actions it does diminish the idea that Eve is a sandbox.

LOL Level playing field...Right. So according to you a 2 day old noob is as good as a 10 year vet? As skilled? as experienced? Lordy do you even see what yer typin?

I got taken down once by a mission griefer, at the time Battleclinic ranked 3rd in the whole game and I was like 4 or 5 months ingame. A corpmate got jumpy and attacked him after he went flashy on us... forget how he got aggro, but he did...

I was in a Cane and he was in a Fed Navy Comet... he drove off my corpmates, and then he webbed and scrammed me and orbited under my guns... I was PvE fit so no web or scram... and he then spent the 15 to 20 minutes it took to eat through my passive armor tank... and not one blessed THING I could do about it. Helluva lesson for me.

So, uh... no,sorry but there is NO level playing field in EVE... unless you mean we are both people playing a game... cause other than that, there are vast differences and nuances of inequality in all fights... just like IRL.

Hey, all you have to do if your corp is peace decced is go PvP in low sec, null or w-space. You also have the option of baiting people into shooting you first (can flipping, duels, plenty of options). It's not like you can't play the game anymore. You just have to be thoughtful.

EVE does have a mostly level playing field, actually. One of the very few remaining MMOs that do. PLEX messes with it a bit, otherwise everybody starts the game the same: a rookie ship and a piece of trit. You make of it what you make of it. No gold ammo, no item shop power ups.

As much as I dislike the current wardec mechanic, it's silly to argue that wardecs somehow magically shut down all PvE. "No PvE" is a choice. There is no in-game switch that kills mining or ratting for the duration. Ever wondered how people manage to mission, mine, or rat in low sec?

One way not to outlaw hisec war completely is to make it a handshake. One alliance declares war on another, and forfeits the money they front if war is not declared on them in return. Perhaps the decced corp has to forfeit the same amount to avoid the war...and the deccing alliance cannot dec again on the same alliance. The decced can later decide to dec the first deccer, and if the gauntlet is not taken up, no further wars can be declared between the two.

Only consensual wars could be fought in hisec without CONCORD's intervening.

Funny, the idea is a clear and perfect example of a mechanism to force people to consider the other viewpoint.Also funny that the very ones who are so sure that PvP has a right for preferential behaviour, and the game is made for them and everyone should HTFU or GTFO are the ones who cannot or will not see the point.

How long will it take before CCP realises that when marketing decided to recruit the toxic gaming element, that it made the game toxic for players who were not so inclined?It was an interesting social element to enfranchise them, now if CCP wishes to keep in business, they need to be told to play nice or GTFO.

PVE Corps are soooooooo dumb, they could really just be replaced by a chat channel and an email list.

I don't know why Jester's choosing to highlight this problem in a way that makes Wardecs out to be the problem with the terrible useless corporation system, if anything Wardecs are the one feature that are sort of working as intended (the problem being there aren't many "good reasons" to wardec somebody as of right now)

New anchorable: Enforcement Exclusion Generator. Usable only in belts, prevents Concord response/security loss within 250km. Non-reusable, removed at downtime, uses some resource (POS fuel? charters?) with a fuel bay that won't hold more than an hour or two worth. Warpable beacon with a warning similar to the ones you get on low/null sec gates.

The intent is to allow corps that want to run a mining op with a security element to have one and preemptively attack would-be gankers or competitors. Tiny fuel bay would keep people from locking up belts right after downtime and logging out for the day.

So kill the exclusion generator in the belt where you want to mine before switching to a mining ship. Or form a mining fleet and take advantage of it. Mining ships have drone bays and NPSI isn't that hard a concept to explain.

There's some potential in both enforcement exclusion and enforcement intensification. But I think giving miners ability to mount a collective, active defense is more interesting gameplay than a giving them a means of spawning NPCs would be.

I believe that, once such a (mining)fleet in a EIG bubble is spotted, combat pilots will answer with excalation tatics. ....and when 10 vindicator battleships arrive on the grid the party is over.Your proposal would be great in an environement where the rewards are worth the risk (ring mining) and but that is probaply not a 15 mill/hour veldspar belt.

10 Vindicators in a belt without concord protection is another escalation to be happen. I mean for real? 10 Tasty multi-billion isk ships that can be be destroyed with a small tornado fleet with alpha strikes?

And btw, what kind of gankers you know that would risk 15 to 30 billion isk to kill a few mining ships + a small support fleet?

What indeed is a problem is that support fleets are not worth the trouble, which makes the whole thing absurd. Gankers can gank mining ships the whole day, the isk balance is still better for the miners than it is for the gankers.

Meaning taking this risk has to pay of not only for the mining ship pilots, but for the potential security as well, and than we are talking about hefty mining reward increases that would be needed and as well a hefty reduction in ore availability. Cut the high-sec ore supply by half, double yield by factor 2 and you might have a decent reward for mining under such an toy. And you might have a reason to do mining outside of high-sec as well.

Uhhhh... guess what? the following is a direct quote from EVE creative director Torfi Frans Ólafsson...

“Eve is very dark,” confirms creative director Torfi Frans Ólafsson. “It’s harsh. It is supposed to be unforgiving. The original designers played a lot of Ultima Online, which was a fantastic sandbox game, and it allowed you to be very devious and very immoral in the way that you played. What they loved about it is that player killers, the griefers – people who just went around and killed other people – became so unpopular that other people banded together. Good started fighting evil, and without true evil you can’t have true good. So you had these bands of righteous people chasing player killers, and those player killers were the original Eve designers; they created a game about that mechanic.”

They created the game they want to play... and they accept that it is a niche game, it's designed that way quite intentionally.

They didn't learn anything from UO's population decline once the life expectancy of a noob exiting a city could be measured in minutes. That led to the cration of a "safe" server which in turn collapsed the population of all other servers and led to a massive disengagement from the playerbase.

OTOH, UO is still alive as it can be handled by simple, cheap hardware, whereas EVE relies on a impressive and expensive server farm.

Okay. So they say they liked the big battles of good versus evil? Great. But you don't see large-scale (or even small-scale, that I know of) operations of people united against griefers. CCP got a fragment of the equation implemented, but the rest hasn't happened.

@SuzarielYou can only do so much when one side is willing to fight, and the other's response is to dock up and cry about it. Likewise, when one side is social, making ties, friendships, alliances, and tools both in-game and out of game, while the other just cries about mean people playing the game in a way they don't like.

Bluntly, if people who don't like griefing want to ally up and do something about it? Awesomesauce. The problem, though, is that highsec carebear corps tend not to be very, uh, sociable. Even with each other. Or willing to join alliances/coalitions. Or any good with building out of game infrastructure for applications beyond single-player EVE. Or very good at the whole 'fighting people' thing. They're a lot better at crying to the devs and docking up, and in fairness to them...they do play to their strengths.

"They created the game they want to play... and they accept that it is a niche game, it's designed that way quite intentionally."

No, actually, they made up the "EVE is harsh" story after the game had already drifted into this direction. The original game was designed to be almost completely safe in high sec, to encourage new players to stay. It was pretty clear at that time that letting older players kill off every new player wasn't going to be a smart business decision.

The EVE is harsh direction made for good publicity in the game trades, when it happened rarely and was newsworthy. CCP incorrectly thought that more griefing, scamming, and other examples of anti-social gameplay would result in more press and attracting more players. Instead of expanding the game, they started shrinking the game by making changes which catered to a small minority of their player base. In actual fact, it became less newsworthy as it became commonplace and of less interest to the general game-playing public.

Ultimately, CCP forced itself into a dead-end niche, and is now paying the price for a bad business decision.

EVE was made by a bunch of Icelandic gankers who thought that Ultima Online was too restrictive and carebear. UO, for God's sake.

EVE's trajectory has been the exact opposite to that which you seem to assume. There has been a steady trend towards reducing the scope for non-consensual PvP. CONCORD has been repeatedly buffed, rules have been changed or introduced, mechanics have strengthened both evasion and defence.

@Anon 9:55 -- I guess I must've led a pretty sheltered EVE life, then, 'cause my experience dealing with high sec corps and alliances has been very, very different from what you describe. Like, unrecognizable.

Yea... I've heard that, but I never played UO myself, but I know someone who did, and he says that it not what happened at all. I dunno the truth myself, all I know is EVE was created by UO players who wanted the open world, unrestricted PVP sandbox game we play today... and well, they have made it work for over 10 years... did UO (in its heyday) last as long?

Well, if I got my EVE-story right, at one point CCP was forced to make dramatic changes to the original game, after a single group discovered how to disrupt the whole universe by permacamaping a chokepoint.

The aftermath led to devs in jove ships whiping the blockade, permabans, the addition of gate guns and CONCORD (later, ~untankable~ CONCORD) and a eventual remapping of the gate network.

So out of the many thousands of items traded, you're going to find the ones that I trade (hint: you won't find them all, or anywhere near) and then you're somehow going to stop me trading in them (hint: you won't).

Please prove me wrong through a well thought out argument. Or just actually do it for real. Maybe against all station traders seeing as it's apparently "basic". That way, you'll have Jita all to yourself.

Jamie, your assertion that one trader should be able to shut down station trading to the point that he "could have Jita all to [his]self" is akin to claiming that one player should be able to fight off a fleet of 5,000.

Try applying some rational levels of scale to your post and you might look like less of a moron.

It is just too bad they don't let go of Greyscale and SonicLover. They could replace them with wooden puppets - at least the puppets would do less damage to the game.

That idiot Greyscale is still dicking around with numbers on a spreadsheet, blindly refusing to admit that his whole plan to change research is totally f**ked up. And, let's not even get started on the "teams" concept that SonicFail is whacking off on. I'm sure it will all work as well as the wardec and bounty changes....

To reject the concept that Eve is a PvP sandbox game yet clearly understand that from way back when until now and nowhere in the discernible future, WARdecs are possible but PEACEdecs or treaty mechanics aren't....Aggression is mechanic'ed.Business is mechanic'ed. (Where there is also aggression.)Peace is not.Tell me considering Eve a PvP sandbox is flat wrong again, please.-Bantara

They don't have to be exactly as described above. They could be a completely mutual agreement which provides benefits after meeting requirements. Either way, mechanics for peace are not present.

Also, back in the days of MUDs, some had both pvp and peaceful characters; all you had to do watch set your own pvp flag. If you had it on no-pvp noone could attack you. That wasn't pvp back then, nor would it be today. It's not pvp, it's setting parameters to your own gameplay.

War decs are pretty strange from an RP point of view, especially in relation to Concord's ostensible purpose.

It might be more interesting to beef up the faction navies, and then trade in currency and LP to have the factions "look the other way" for wars. If CCP did this, then empire corps could simply relocate around empire. For some industrial corps, this would be an expensive proposition. That might result in interesting gameplay, or it might not. I've always liked the idea of NPC factions showing preference to some players over others, whether in empire, or in NPC controlled null. At the very least, it gives the landscape some variation and bumpiness.

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